I love Jelsa for many reasons and one of those reasons is Jelsa being a small place with not much going on, which makes it not loud, friendly and very safe for kids as they grow up in a small community of people who know each other. And this is true for most part of the year. But when summer comes, Jelsa changes into a busy tourism destination, with lots of people everywhere and lots of events to visit. It gives us the opportunity to meet various people from all over the world, talking, exchanging information, getting to know various cultures and sometimes making firm friendships. It is like travelling the world, but without the actual travelling, because the “world” comes to us, to Jelsa.. There are various concerts, musical performances, workshops for kids and more and most of the events are free, so we can get as much culture as we can during the summer.
We are often at the St. Ivan Square, where the performances of the Jelsa folklore group KUD Jelsa take place. And we saw some chairs being prepared the other night at the square so we went to see what will be happening this time. As it turns out it was one of the events of the Mali Grad Faros festival for kids organized by Kristijan Ugrina every year. The performance by the Zaprešić Theatre for children and youth called “Svaki pas ima svoj dan” by the kids theatre group (9-13 years old). It was a musical about dogs looking for the promised land for dogs – an award winning performance (awarded for best actor and actress at the International festival in Sisak “Maslačak”).
A short movie by the older theatre group followed after the show, but we were not able to stay as it was getting late. The Zaprešić theatre group had 3 performances (Bol, Jelsa and Stari Grad) during their stay at the festival and the very helpful Nikolina Bakmaz, one of the leader of the theatre group, expressed their gratitude for being able to perform in Jelsa as they where received very well.
(pictures from the Zapresic Theatre)
The Mali Grad Jolha Festival in Jelsa started on Monday July 6, 2015 and they will be working with kids every day at 19:00 at the St. Ivan Square to prepare a theatre performance from scratch to be performed at the same square several days later. So, let the kids get creative!!
